This will definitely turn into a derail if continued (tbf, largely my fault for starting it), but: FFS, et tu, ICC? How is it that you can denounce pretty much everyone alive as being integrated into the state or duped by the bourgeoisie or whatever, with the sole exceptions of Robert Fisk and Piers Robinson? You need to tell your close sympathiser to give their head a good wobble if they really think that the sodding World Socialist Website is a reliable source on the subject of conspiracy theories.

Related, both Chomsky and Seymour Hersh put quite a lot of effort into questioning a chemical attack by Assad, but it turned out both were relying on Theodore Postol, who in turn was relying on Maram Susli - a conspiracy theorist associated with far right groups like Generation Identity. Hersh went on fucking infowars with Alex Jones.

With the ICC article, it links to the WSWS's interview with Piers Robinson, where Robinson recommends Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett. Both are well known conspiracy theorists with far-right associations.

The Red/Brown alliances piece details this quite well, but it's interminably long, so quoting the sections on both:

- why are people obsessed with the specifics of who carried out chemical weapons attacks or whether or not they were false flags, when there is plenty of disastrous conventional bombing in Syria?

- why can't any of the major anti-war journos (and Chomsky) who push this stuff manage to stay more than a step or two removed from fash?

- surely the reliance of anti-war arguments on a conspiracy by the US/NATO to implicate Assad using chemical weapons suggests that if Assad has used chemical weapons, it would be fine to bomb him? If you oppose US intervention in Syria, then you would oppose it in the case of confirmed chemical weapons usage too? Or not?

- The US-led coalition has carried out many, many aerial bombings in Syria, killing thousands of civilians, such as in the assault on Raqqa. Why is there such focus on extremely limited bombing of Assad military positions (often empty due to advance warning) rather than areas held by IS with civilians?

This kind of whitewashing is regularly pushed by the Marcyite groups in the US (especially the PSL and ANSWER coalition, and the WWP), as well as the CPGB-ML and CPB in the UK, but didn't really expect to see it from the ICC.

I would be interested if Baboon, or anyone from the ICC, could explain a few things about that article, like, when you talk about how "those that make any critique are labelled as "conspiracy theorists" and "pro-Assad apologists"" and "The Guardian began a campaign against the Sheffield University professor, Piers Robinson", and then link to an interview* where he tells his readers "Talk to Vanessa Beeley or Eva Bartlett": do you think that Vanessa Beeley - a woman who has literally said that meeting Assad was her "proudest moment" - has been unfairly and inaccurately labelled as a pro-Assad apologist? If not, and you agree that Beeley, at the very least is a pro-Assad apologist, then can you understand why linking to an interview where Robinson recommends her work might somewhat undermine the case that Robinson himself is being unfairly smeared as pro-Assad? I could continue on, but you get my drift.

* an interview from a deeply odd conspiracy theorist WRP splinter, no less.

Seymour Hersch, the investigative journalist who fleshed out this story, also reported in 2016 that there were plans in the US to send Sarin gas from Libya in order to set up the Assad regime with the blame for an attack, athough that's not been confirmed

Oh, didn't realise I cross-posted there. Anyway, one more for the list of questions:
If US/UK imperialism is so desperate to escalate the conflict with Assad that they'd carry out false flag attacks to create a pretext for further intervention, then when Assad hands them a pretext by violating the deescalation zone around Deraa, you'd expect them to be all over it. Instead, they've just gone "you're on your own there" and backed off: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/24/us-tells-syria-rebels-not-expect-help-against-expected-army/

Can anyone explain why this is, if they're so committed to escalating their involvement that they'd stage a false flag attack?

The UK is currently involved in wars of wholesale slaughter in Syria, Iraq and Yemen - amongst others. To first of all denounce one's "own" country for its involvement in imperialist war is not to support any other side when it is based on a consistent position of internationalism. Neither Robert Fisk nor Piers Robinson defend any sort of proletarian positions but the responses to their, generally insipid, critiques from the main factions of the British bourgeoisie are symptomatic of the treatment that anyone gets who questions their versions of the "truth". Terms like "Pro-Assad apologist" and "Moscow's useful idiots" are expressions of subtle repression in the context above. Someone on here talks of "whitewashing" - who, what? Be clearer, what's being "whitewashed" and by whom?

I thought that the interview with Piers Robinson with the WSWS was very interesting and worth a mention. Most of us learn and try to understand what we know from bourgeois media outlets and that by definition includes left wing varieties like the WSWS. Robinson and his team have consistently revealed the mendacity of the British state's war propaganda including the origins of the war in Iraq, its continuation in the Middle East and the whole "humanitarian" smokescreen that it uses. I also thought that his "Briefing note: update on the Salisbury poisoning" was very well researched and shows how the question remains open. His brief mention of Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, a mistake in my opinion, doesn't at all detract from his overall work.

The article makes the point that the chemical poisoning could be an "irrational act" but it also makes the point, in relation to all the wars in the Middle East, that not only are tens of thousands of people getting blown apart by all sorts of explosives, but also that longer-term sicknesses, a by-product of “conventional” explosives, will probably extract a considerable human toll.

In a similar way, why the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima when the Japanese were ready to sue for peace is a legitimate question. It wasn't irrational at all from the perspective of US imperialism because its aim was to send a very clear message to Russia, which had its own ambitions towards Japan and the Far East.

Terms like "Pro-Assad apologist" and "Moscow's useful idiots" are expressions of subtle repression in the context above.

There are people in both the US and the UK who specifically defend Assad though. This ranges from everything from "Assad is the only option that isn't IS" to "the CIA is funding the white helmets (who are actually Al Qaeda) to re-use trained child actors to stage chemical weapons attack videos", to "Russia is intervening to protect Syrian national sovereignty against NATO takfiris".

Some of these people are campists (i.e. willing to support any state aligned against the US), some go further into conspiracy theory.

Just because some people with a genuine anti-war position get charged with being pro-Assad, does not mean that it's not accurate when someone actually is pro-Assad.

A good way to avoid being labeled as an Assad apologist is to:
1. Not do apologetics for Assad
2. Not appear with/promote people who do apologetics for Assad, just because they're superficially 'anti-war'

Baboon wrote:

I thought that the interview with Piers Robinson with the WSWS was very interesting and worth a mention. ... His brief mention of Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett, a mistake in my opinion, doesn't at all detract from his overall work.

We need to look at these mechanisms of information manipulation. And my research interest in propaganda has carried on since then, to this point with Mark Crispin Miller, David Miller, Chris Simpson and myself setting up the Organisation for Propaganda Studies. Its primary aim is to encourage research and writing into questions of propaganda and manipulation and how that can undermine democracy.

Was there another possible outcome? Yes. A pragmatic alliance between Assad and the Kurds, which would have allowed for Assad to remain as president and the Kurdish to get a degree of autonomy, stood a real chance of defeating Turkey and its proxies, while keeping a certain autonomy from their foreign patrons. A far cry from the scenario every party would have wished for, but no doubt the best possible scenario that could have come out of this absolute humanitarian disaster called Syrian Civil War.

So, the revolutionary anarchist communist approach is to... complain that things went wrong when the PYD didn't actually line up to help Assad massacre the opposition from day one. WTF? Obviously members of Anarkismo-affiliated groups, if any of them read here, are under no obligation to take my advice, but if I was in their shoes I'd be asking some serious questions about the editorial group putting this kind of crap up.

I googled the author and the name is similar to that of a Syrian Ba'athist minister - not sure if that's coincidence or a consciously chosen pseudonym, but I could not easily find other articles by them online.

On the proposed alliance between Rojava and Assad, I don't think I've seen this Amnesty report on Raqqa mentioned on here (although maybe it's in one of the long threads) - the fact that Raqqa was full of civilians as well as ISIS has been a bit glossed over by the people who glorified the assault on it, and it was mostly ignored by the campist anti-imperialists since it was against IS rather than Assad.

What with Tucker Carlson being one of the most prominent mainstream faces of the red-brown Assadist alliance, does anyone know if any of his lefty anti-imperialist guests like Greenwald or Blumenthal have spoken out to defend their old mucker Tucker against the antifascists and antiracists being mean to him? It would seem a bit ungrateful if they haven't.

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